May 31st, 2017 §
“An Ultimate Concern”
The Life & Work of Flannery O’Connor
Thursday, June 1 at 7:00 p.m.
Seattle University
Bannan 102 Auditorium, Bannan Science Building
“The only concern, so far as I see it, is what Tillich calls the ultimate concern. It is what makes the stories spare and what gives them any permanent quality they may have.”
—Flannery O’Connor
Organized by Crossroads Seattle Cultural Center and featuring Image editor Gregory Wolfe, this multi-media presentation will offer insights into the life and art of American writer Flannery O’Connor.
A collage made up of film and audio clips—including O’Connor’s own voice—dramatic readings, and narrative background, “An Ultimate Concern” will delve into this Southern writer’s enigmatic stories and their provocative use of violence and the grotesque.
This event is an opportunity to encounter Flannery O’Connor through her own words, in order to enter into the heart of her thought, her stories, her personality, and her brief but intensely fulfilled life.
May 25th, 2017 §
Graduating senior Alli Bautista looks back fondly on her days as an English lit major. “When I first came to SPU, I wasn’t sure what I was going to major in,” says Alli, like so many students, “but I was very sure of what I didn’t want to study.” She says her “decision boiled down to a few questions: What do I want to know more about and what do I love? And the answer to both was—and still is—literature.
“The English major is about more than just literature,” Alli explains. “I’ve found that it’s an intriguing intersection of history, philosophy, language, and life. I think I’ve learned just as many life lessons from my classes in the past four years as I have about sentence structure and Shakespeare.”
With her usual graciousness and sense of humor, Alli explains: “I’ve met with professors who care about more than just what happens in the classroom, who have taken the time to get to know and invest in me. The classmates I’ve met in the English major have diverse interests that extend outside our realm of study. The classmates that have become friends challenge me to think more deeply and, even more importantly, understand—and sometimes laugh at—my bad literature jokes.”
Congrats, Alli! We will all see you at Ivy Cutting and Commencement next month.
May 11th, 2017 §
Image‘s 14th Annual Denise Levertov Award
Richard Rodriguez
7:00 p.m.
Thursday, May 25
415 Westlake
Seattle, Washington
Hailed by the Washington Post as “one of the most eloquent and probing public intellectuals in America,” Richard Rodriguez in 1982 published Hunger of Memory, a widely read memoir that remains controversial today for its objections to affirmative action and bilingual education.
Rodriguez’s second book, Days of Obligation, on the moral landscapes of Mexico and the United States, was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. Brown, Rodriguez’s book on racial mixing—the paradox of being brown in black-and-white America—was nominated for a National Book Critics award. His most recent book, Darling, explores the significance of desert landscapes in Christianity, Judaism, and Islam.
In 1992, the federal government honored Rodriquez’s work with the Frankel Prize (the award now renamed the National Humanities Medal). At present Rodriguez is writing a book on why beauty matters.
May 4th, 2017 §
“The We of Me: Writing the Relations that Define Us”
Thursday, May 4 | 3:00 p.m.
Seattle Pacific University
Library Reading Room
Our stories often find their significance where the “me” and the “we” intersect. This talk will consider the ways the personal essay decenters the self to make room for another’s experience, complicating and enriching the individual in the process.
Isaac Anderson is the 2016-17 Milton Fellow at Image journal. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Fourth Genre, Image, Portland Magazine, Los Angeles Review of Books, Literature and Belief, and elsewhere, and his piece “Lord God Bird” (Image issue 72) received honorable mention in Best American Essays. He holds an MFA in creative writing from the Ohio State University, has taught at Ohio State, Lenoir-Rhyne University, and Western Theological Seminary, and has been a writer-in-residence at the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts.
As Milton Fellow, Isaac is working on a collection of essays titled This Is How the End Begins, a manuscript that examines moments of personal or historic consequence as threshold moments of birth and death, opening and closure. His essays consider subjects such as American identities and rituals, fidelity, addiction, loneliness and prayer, faith and science, cultivating empathy, religious extremism, and contingency as a native part of human being.
This event is free and open to the public. Q&A to follow.
